


i'm not running away (i'm already gone)

by debeauharnais



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: Backstory, Childhood, M/M, Pre-Series, idk rip in peace me, lanskiano if u squint, lmaooooo this is trash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 21:40:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4761977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/debeauharnais/pseuds/debeauharnais
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day, kid. You and me. We'll be kings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm not running away (i'm already gone)

_One day, kid. You and me. We’ll be kings._

He says that, sometimes – promises milled out past teeth and gums scrubbed just a little too hard; sometimes there’d be a reason, like a man a little too upperclass to have any business down there (and it was always _there_ or _here_ , never any other name – they’d escape from here, this place where smoke settles in lungs and ash and blood and _hatred_ cling to tongues) elbowing the too-small scrap and the ruffian aside. Charlie’d spit abuse and insolence and then he’d nudge little Meyer forward, muttering about crowns and thrones to the boy picking filth from under his fingernails and imagining it’s a thousand lives he’s tossing into the gutter. Sometimes, Charlie just says it. And he grins, so _sure_ they’ll end up with an empire for two. Meyer knows he isn’t. There’s that picayune fragment of Charlie – just a nibbling little doubt that decides to start breathing some nights, when he’s trying to sleep in a room too small on a bed too dusty – that thinks they’ll be there ( _here_ ) until their bones turn brittle and they drift into nothing. Obscurity. They're drowning there, on their knees. But Meyer’s sure. He’ll die somewhere so much grander.

Sometimes they’ll clamber up onto the roof of an old bakery, the tin creaking under their weight, and they never say it but they both _know_ they’re thinking _we’re like gods up here._ The air’s cooler in the summer, the clang and the stench of the slums below them, and they can close their eyes and… _disappear_. Into the nocturne. No lights, no sound. They’ll smell the iron of imagined circlets and breathe the cries of glory and worship torn from the throats of the masses. And so what if their kingdom is founded on a sea of corpses? They’ve escaped. Built their lives at the cost of the lifeless. Inhaled the death rattles of the sacrificial lambs. Meyer thinks he ought to feel remorse and wonders why the ice in his veins hasn’t yet thawed (it never will). But, ah, you see. Desperation – it makes killers of the young and sinners of the pure-hearted. And he’ll feel the warm breeze on his bruised skin and the grime of the rooftop beneath his head; he’ll feel Charlie’s heat beside him – so close Meyer thinks he can sense his pulse whispering in his fingertips – and he’ll know the other boy’s running as well, running far away behind his eyes.

“You ever – fuck, I dunno. You ever wonder what’ll happen if we don’t get outta here?” Meyer knows Charlie is staring up into the great abyss of the sky but he doesn’t open his eyes; he’s not ready to go back to living. So he just breathes. A wandering silence passes between them, carried away like cobwebs into the streets below. He feels the loss of heat, the arch of the metal, as Charlie shifts and sits. Then Meyer opens his mouth (dry lips and scabbed flesh), tastes the smog, the haze, and exhales as his far-off fantasies succumb to the bleakness of reality. His muscles relax and he draws an arm up to rest above his head (no crown, not yet), eyes still closed. Defiance in the face of the night. He’ll conjure his own darkness, this mite of fourteen and one month.

“No, Charlie. ‘Cause we will.”

_We’ll be kings._


End file.
